Adam Levine, lead singer of Maroon 5 and outspoken liberal, has become a walking meme overnight.
It all started when a 21-year-old Instagram model posted screenshots of a conversation she claimed happened between herself and the married singer. Sumner Stroh promised she wasn’t a homewrecker, but she still felt it important to come forward with news of Levine’s infidelity before one of her friends sold the story to the tabloids.
Her timing was terrible. Just days before the screenshots of Levine allegedly telling Stroh he wanted to name his unborn child after her, the singer’s wife Behati Prinsloo – who happens to be a supermodel – had announced she was pregnant with their third child.
“Embarrassed I was involved [with] a man with this utter lack of remorse and respect,” Stroh wrote in the TikTok video caption explaining the situation, as The Daily Wire originally reported. The video has racked up million of views in just a few days.
“I’m just gonna rip the band-aid off,” Stroh wrote. “Essentially, I was having an affair with a man who’s married to a Victoria’s Secret model.”
“At the time, I was young, I was naive, and, I mean, quite frankly, I feel exploited,” the social media influencer continued. “I wasn’t in the scene like I am now. So I was definitely very easily manipulated.”
“Adam and I were seeing each other for about a year, after I stopped talking to him over a period of months, this is how he came back into my life,” she continued, showing off screenshots of the alleged conversation where Levine mentioned naming his child after her.
“You ok with that? DEAD serious,” he allegedly wrote of his shocking request.
Following the social media uproar, the married father of two admitted he had “crossed a line” and sent inappropriate messages, but claimed he wasn’t physically unfaithful.
“I used poor judgment in speaking with anyone other than my wife in ANY kind of flirtatious manner,” the singer said Tuesday, as The Daily Wire previously reported. “I did not have an affair, nevertheless, I crossed the line during a regrettable period of my life.”
“In certain instances it became inappropriate. I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family. My wife and my family is all I care about in this world,” he continued.
“To be this naive and stupid enough to risk the only thing that truly matters to me was the greatest mistake I could ever make. I will never make it again. I take full responsibility. We will get through it and we will get through it together.”
Not long after Levine’s public apology, more women came forward with their own stories of flirtatious DMs from Levine. Comedian Maryka shared screenshots of her alleged interactions with the married singer. Levine wrote in their conversation, “Distract yourself by f***ing with me!” She also shared a private video of Levine saying, “I’m stupid” that didn’t include context.
She showed images of Levine allegedly writing, “I’m now obsessed with you.”
A couple screenshots of the Maroon 5 singer supposedly interacting with other women have become meme fodder.
“It is truly unreal how f***ing hot you are. Like it blows my mind,” Levine allegedly wrote in one interaction with a woman. Social media users have been inserting other objects into the conversation, equating the hotness with ”printers in the 1990s,” “Me to my MacBook after using it for 30 minutes,” “me vs the hot pocket i just made” and “Goldilocks trying the first bowl of porridge,” per Page Six.
As for the exchange where he says, “Holy f***. Holy f***ing f***. That body of yours is absurd,” users are inserting imagery ranging from a photo of a duck to video game graphics of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.
Even fans of Levine are cringing at his method of flirting via DM. They’re also expressing sympathy for the singer’s wife and family who were publicly humiliated. It’s worth noting that before Levine got married and had kids, he wasn’t on board with monogamy.
“Instinctively, monogamy is not in our genetic makeup,” the Maroon 5 frontman told Cosmopolitan in 2009. “People cheat. I have cheated. And you know what? There is nothing worse than the feeling of doing it.”
In 2012, he told Details that his promiscuous ways were a result of loving women so much that he wants to be with all of them.
“There’s two kinds of men: There are men who are f***ing misogynist pigs, and then there are men who just really love women, who think they’re the most amazing people in the world. And that’s me,” Levine said of himself.
“Maybe the reason I was promiscuous, and wanted to sleep with a lot of them, is that I love them so much.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Levine said that he was “so capable of understanding women” because after his parents broke up, they moved in with her brother’s ex-wife who was also single.
“So I was living in a house with two jilted women, plus my cousin, who’s more like my sister, and my brother, Michael, who we eventually found out is gay.”
He said, “Just the estrogen alone . . . You know when you’re 14 and terrified to talk to a girl? I didn’t suffer much from that. It seemed very natural to me to talk to girls.”
Before marrying Prinsloo, Levine had questioned the concept of marriage in general. “If you don’t get married, you can’t get divorced,” he said in 2013. At the time, he was dating the woman who would later become his wife, but they didn’t actually tie the knot until 2014.
The recording artist put aside his qualms about permanent commitment and wed Prinsloo in a private ceremony in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Levine seemed happy with his decision, telling Ryan Seacrest that it made him feel more like a man to become a husband.
“You feel like a man or something, it’s weird,” the singer explained. “The relationship doesn’t change, but you feel slightly more masculine. I feel like from a man’s perspective… at the end of the day, if you’re with the right person, the guy is supposed to feel like, I think, a little bit more of a man.”
Levine became a father after welcoming Dusty Rose in 2016 and Gio Grace in 2018. He claimed fatherhood was the most important thing in the world to him.
“You’re born to be a parent. That’s what we’re here for, really,” Levine told ET. “All the other sh** is great, but it’s not what we’re here for.”
Fans seem most concerned about Levine’s wife and kids as the infidelity scandal gets more complicated.
However, Prinsloo was spotted out and looking happy since the incident went viral. She was photographed holding hands with Levine in an apparent silent message of solidarity as the world wonders if his views on promiscuity haven’t changed much.